A TEACHING assistant told a schoolboy that kissing him “made me shake”, a court heard yesterday.

But although Helen Turnbull admitted falling for the teenager she insisted: “We did not have sex.”

Turnbull, 35, sobbed as she told a jury she and the 16-year-old became close at a low point in her marriage to ex-husband Ben.

The mother-of-two said the boy flattered her about her looks and dress sense and she admitted kissing him during a tryst in her car.

I’ve never had sex with him, he never sat in the back of my car, I’ve never done anything sexual other than kiss him

Helen Turnbull

But she insisted they did not climb into the back and strip for sex sessions as the boy claims.

The literacy assistant is accused of seducing the pupil at East County Durham secondary after sending him a picture message in which she wore only lingerie.

Turnbull said yesterday: “I’ve never had sex with him, he never sat in the back of my car, I’ve never done anything sexual other than kiss him.”

Teeside Crown Court heard Turnbull described the embrace as “explosive” in a series of messages adding: “We looked power when kissing. I checked us out in the car mirror. It was awesome, a proper turn on, it made me shake.”

The boy asked her in a reply: “Why don’t you do anything when turned on?” to which she replied: “Not ready.”

She told how a one-night stand before she met Ben Turnbull, 38, had dogged their marriage. She said: “I’d been with the same person since I was 20 and hadn’t had sex with anyone else.

“On New year’s Eve at the Millennium I had a one-night stand with someone my husband knew before we were together, before he had even asked me out.

“I told him about it when we got together but I wish I hadn’t because he threw it back in my face constantly.

“I told this to (the boy). I told him over and over it wasn’t going to happen.”

She admitted sending erotic messages including the underwear photo but added: “There was no intention ever to act on the messages but it was what he wanted.”

In his evidence the boy, now 18, said they met three times and had sex in her car, that she performed sex acts on him as he sat in the passenger seat and that they squeezed into the bucket seats in the back to have full intercourse.

Turnbull, of, Haswell, County Durham, denies three charges of sexual activity with a child by a person in a position of trust in June and July last year.

She admits one further charge which involved kissing the boy. The trial continues.

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